


the most ironic part of all of this is

by crownsandbirds



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Character Study, Existential Crisis, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Post-Break Up, character introspection, legal drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-12 04:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19940563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownsandbirds/pseuds/crownsandbirds
Summary: "Akashi tilts his head to the back and to the side, eyes Kuroko just from the edge of his peripherical vision. There's a shopping basket hanging from the crook of his elbow.Kuroko isn't sure he isn't hallucinating yet."what happens when you're not special anymore.alternatively, Kuroko bumps into Akashi in a supermarket's coffee aisle at 3 in the morning, Aomine isn't anything remarkable, and Kise drinks beer.





	the most ironic part of all of this is

**Author's Note:**

> "I once lived in the sea;  
> Bring me to your ear, you can hear  
> The tide where I used to be -  
> Though now I'm but a shell. 
> 
> Don't dare regret anything;  
> Remember what you're here for, you  
> Just play your violin,  
> And we will manage somehow"
> 
> (because dreaming costs money, my dear - mitski)

In the strange fluorescent lights of this particular supermarket, Akashi's eyes look too much like liquid gold for Kuroko's liking. 

Akashi is shifting through coffee brands. His fingers are still graceful in that uncanny, practiced manner that used to send shivers down Kuroko's spine whenever they rested casually on the back of his neck after a particularly successful game. His hair has the same psychopathic pink tone it had during middle school and high school and the viciously boring interval of time between graduation and college, but it's shorter now, buzzed-cut, his nape visible and strangely vulnerable, the chiseled curve of his jaw stronger. 

He tilts his head to the back and to the side, eyes Kuroko just from the edge of his peripherical vision. There's a shopping basket hanging from the crook of his elbow. 

Kuroko isn't sure he isn't hallucinating yet. His psychiatrist has yet to reach a definite conclusion about the precise state of his mental health. 

"Good evening, Kuroko," Akashi says. His voice, still with the same mean cut around the perfectly pronounced words, as if Akashi's speech is one more of his, quite frankly, astounding collection of defense mechanisms against the entire world. It still resonates around the room, carves at the spaces between asylum-white floor tiles, makes Kuroko take an instinctive step back because Akashi's voice always has this way of pushing people back and down and  _ down _ . It sets a line and forces you away. 

Kuroko isn't 15 years old and the type to fall on his knees anymore, but, if anything, he's weaker now than he was before, and there's something resting in his bone marrow and the tissue wrapped around his aorta that smells like  _ cowardice _ and calls itself  _ caution _ ; so taking a step back it is. 

"Akashi-kun," he answers, with the fascinating lack of eloquence that stems from interacting with someone who's superior to you in every single way. Not being called  _ Tetsuya _ in that inhumanly diamond-sharp tone, however, is enough to force his shoulders to relax and his feet to shift to steadiness on the floor. Kuroko's mind is its own being of thought, but his body remains a creature of reaction. Akashi's neutrality is reassuring in and of itself because it speaks to not-anger and not-displeasure. 

He doesn't correct Akashi in saying it's 3 in this godforsaken morning and so,  _ good evening _ doesn't really apply to the situation at hand. You don't correct Akashi Seijuro. 

Kuroko and Kagami beat him at that one game years ago, and at the time it had felt life-changing, near terrifying in its power to shift the universe around on its axis, but high school is over and so is the viciously boring interval of time between graduation and college, and Kagami went back to America and Akashi got a haircut and became the best student in the best business school in the country, and suddenly the results of old basketball matches don't mean nearly as much anymore when you barely have the time - or the energy, or the will - to feel the curve of a ball on your palm. 

And so. Akashi Seijuro is always right, and everything he says is true, and he is absolute and the emperor and so on and so forth and Kuroko half-wishes he was still a player and Akashi was still a captain so he could ask him,  _ what happens now? What happens now that we all close our apartment doors behind ourselves and work towards a future that looks nothing like the one I wanted at 15? What happens now that I have no idea what future even means?  _

He thinks Akashi would have the answer to that, as he used to have answers to everything, but it's not his place to ask. 

Kuroko knows his place. 

"How have you been?" he asks instead. 

Akashi finally picks a fancy brand of cappuccino and places it carefully on the basket. Classic. Elegant, gold package. Kuroko imagines him fixing himself a cup at his brand-new, glass-window, steel-slick apartment. 

"Fine," Akashi answers with the same robotic instinct that comes from someone who is used to not questioning his surroundings. He shifts to look at Kuroko front on - he has a small, silver ring around his littlest finger. It looks strangely charming and disgustingly expensive. It fits with the sleek black watch on his elegant wrist, and both of them look out of place in this convenience store. "And you? I trust you have been well?"

-

Aomine growls into his coffee cup. Imayoshi's pleasantly distant smile keeps its smooth curve on his lips. 

The simple  _ existence  _ of Aomine's former captain is enough to send a bitter taste down his tongue to the edge of his pharynx. Life sets its pace differently for everyone, and it so happens that things went absolutely batshit chaotic for a handful of years until they finally,  _ finally _ settled down enough for Aomine to take a breath and figure out where the _ fuck _ he was, even - when that happened, Imayoshi had already become a graduate student, well on his merry, successful way to a masters, in the exact same college Aomine ended up stumbling his way to in order to pursue an undergraduate program; and suddenly they bump into each other every other day in the coffee shop located between the ugly central building and the uncanny anatomy laboratories. 

"You're not half-bad," Imayoshi spares a glance at his phone in front of him, touches the edge of the screen with his fingernail. People don't change entirely in a handful of years, and Aomine's old captain remains as slightly unsettling as he was in high school. 

"The fuck is that supposed to mean."

"It means I expected far less from you. Your academic journey has been a strangely pleasant surprise after the other, Aomine-kun."

Imayoshi says this in his usual perfectly polite tone, as if he's commenting on the delightfully refreshing weather they've had, what a peculiar thing for July, instead of throwing around his sardonic opinion of Aomine's academic underachievements. He sounds exactly the same as he did when they were in high school and he was the captain of a basketball team and had the habit of wrecking people with his crystal-cut criticisms while smiling at them with unbelievably fake nicety. 

Aomine's growl has teeth now. "Fuck off, I'm not  _ stupid _ ."

Imayoshi's chuckle is demeaning and amused, and in its trail of dismissive sound, he leans back in his chair, props his chin up on top of his entwined fingers. He wears his usual black button-up shirts with the same relaxed ease he used to wear his basketball uniform with, and Aomine  _ hates _ him for that, hates him for shifting and adapting while Aomine is still trapped in the hazy amount of months that composed his high school years, back when things still made sense. 

"I never said you were," Imayoshi points out with a grace that does nothing to hide the true meaning of his previous words, and takes a sip of his coffee. The steam rising from the cup fogs his glasses and hides his eyes. 

What he says is,  _ I never said you were.  _ What he means is,  _ you're just not special anymore.  _

Aomine tries not to think about that, but it's hard when he's faced on a near-daily basis with the flawless portrayal of smooth-gliding 20s framed around a pair of tasteful glasses and the familiar curve of a mean smile. He feels incredibly messy in comparison; messy and full of jagged edges that don't really fit anywhere. 

He misses basketball. He misses keeping scores. He misses the 100s and the sound of sneakers against polished floors. 

Imayoshi's phone vibrates on the table. Whatever it is that shows up on the lockscreen, apparently a text message, is enough to shift Imayoshi's neutral, ice-cold smile into something darker, with a sliver of teeth, uncanny in its slow tracing of his lips. 

Aomine downs the rest of his coffee. "Who did your psycho boyfriend kill this time?"

Imayoshi, with all the graceful elegance of someone who doesn't spare a thought for other people unless absolutely necessary, doesn't dignify him with a response. He gets up, throws his bag over his shoulder, leaves his half-drunk cup on the table and says, "Go get drunk, Aomine-kun. Find someone nice and split some beers. You look like you need it."

When he finds himself alone, Aomine grabs his phone and dials Kise's number and hopes he doesn't pick up. 

-

Kuroko wakes up to the sound of a violin. 

So it'd ended up that Akashi wasn't an hallucination, or at least he wasn't in that particular _ supermarket at 3 am _ instance. It'd ended up that making polite small talk was much less entertaining than making out on top of Akashi's extremely upper-class couch and then shifting matters to his king-sized bed. 

They weren't drunk. They were just bored, in that adult drag of boredom that makes you want to kill yourself. 

Kuroko turns around in the huge bed. He can't feel any trace of human warmth that could've been left behind by Akashi in the sheets. His pillow smells like him, though - expensive masculine cologne, so painfully Akashi's. Kuroko thinks it's one of the Narciso Rodriguez ones. 

The song trails on from the study. It's a drawled out one, this song - full of delicate ups and downs. It makes Kuroko sleepy, gives weight to his eyelids. He thinks it's Tchaikovsky. 

"I didn't know you still played," he says when he reaches the study to see Akashi fully dressed in waistcoat, button-down shirt and slacks, a violin lovingly cradled between his chin and his arm. It's the most tender he has ever seen his old captain be towards something, anything at all - more tender than he was with Kuroko himself the night before. 

Akashi glances at him, his mouth set in a stoic line, his eyes analyzing, cold like the morning sun. "I would rather not lose an acquired skill. Even if it's not a very remarkable one."

Kuroko realizes Akashi is bare-footed against the soft carpet. It soothes something inside him - this small display of humanity. 

"Good morning," Kuroko says stupidly. 

Akashi puts the violin down in its case. The muscles of his shoulders shift under his shirt. "Good morning, Kuroko. I hope you slept pleasantly."

_ He's gorgeous _ , Kuroko's mind points out, not for the first time, not the first time at all. Akashi would be easy to fall in love with. He's apathetic and orderly enough that it'd be remarkably easy to build a routine around his empire of an existence. He's rich, which 20-something-year old Kuroko finds as a much bigger priority than 15-year old Kuroko did. He's familiar enough for his presence to be comforting, but they don't have between them the syrupy drag of intimacy that makes everything heavier. He knows what he's doing with his life, while Kuroko doesn't. It could work out. 

It's a shame Kuroko isn't in love with him. 

He's devoted. Which is not the same thing. Which Kuroko is old enough to know is far from being the same thing. The relationship between a flawed god and a tired worshipper isn't the same as the one between lovers. 

"Where's the nearest subway station?" Kuroko asks. Akashi looks at him with this gracefully puzzled look that's Akashi language for,  _ that's rather middle class of you.  _

Kuroko thinks it's really fucking bold of him to look at him like that when he was buying coffee at a convenience store in a gas station at 3 in the goddamn morning. 

"I can give you a lift to wherever you prefer," Akashi offers, fixing the cuffs of his shirt that probably costs more than Kuroko's rent for the month. "I must leave for a meeting either way."

Kuroko nods. "That would be great."

When they're finishing up breakfast and Kuroko is still reeling with the image of Akashi eating pancakes, his handsome silhouette framed by the cold morning sun, his former emperor hands him a blood-red tie and says, "Help me with this." 

It's as easy to follow his orders now as it was almost 10 years ago. Kuroko steps forward, close into his personal space, and feels Akashi's warm breath on his skin and piercing eyes on his face as he slowly and carefully fiddles with the knot of the tie. It's the most careful he has been with something in a long time, he realizes. He could write a book about this - about Akashi and his eyes and his breath and his bare feet on the carpet and his Tchaikovsky violin concerto and his hands on Kuroko's hips and the way he sleeps curled up around himself like he's scared of something that could come through the door. 

It's a shame Kuroko isn't a good enough writer to write about the important things. 

The tie knot looks neat and proper. Akashi's car smells like money and business and everything Kuroko will never be.

He grabs his phone with the cracked screen and types out, 

_ hey _

_ it's been a while _

and hopes Kagami will answer. 

-

They don’t get drunk in the same way they did when they were in high school.

Aomine is starting to realize he compares everything to high school. Maybe because it’s the one parameter he has in regards to when things were actually functioning in a slightly decent way. 

When they were in high school, they got drunk like they wanted the world to start and end between the space that went from their mouths to the rim of the glass. Kise drank red wine straight from the bottle, hand wrapped around the neck, head tilted back, the moonlight shining out of the arched curve of his throat; and Midorima pretended to judge him while he himself downed glass after glass of whiskey with all the experienced surety of an alcoholic 60-year old man. Akashi’s personal tastes went more towards extremely expensive gin, the Tanqueray rich boy that he was, although Aomine couldn’t remember a single time Akashi had actually lost his perfect composure other than his knife-hot red eyes turning just a little bit foggier on the edges. Murasakibara would down anything sweet, and Aomine himself was a drop-dead lover of everything with vodka. 

Now, he’s sitting on a table across from Kise, a handful of empty beer bottles between them, and they’ve been nursing the same half-full cheap glasses for the past half-hour. 

“Never picked you for a beer type,” Aomine points out, takes a sip of his own glass, grimaces with the unpleasant warmth of a drink left unattended for too long. “You were much more of a wine guy.”

“Yeah, well,” Kise says in that slightly drawled out voice that rolls off his tongue whenever he gets a little drunk and makes Aomine want to kiss him, “red wine hangover is about the worst in the world. And besides, drinking wine by yourself is just depressing.” 

Aomine half-laughs, half-scoffs. “Who was it that used to say ‘it’s not alcoholism unless you’re drinking by yourself in the middle of the day’?”

“Kurokocchi, I think.”

“Sounds like him, alright.”

Kise smiles, nostalgia dragging the corner of his lips in a tentative curve upwards. His fingers drum a chaotic little rhythm in the greasy table. “It does.”

Here’s how things went. It just so happened that a very specific amount of destiny shifts and strange coincidences gathered at the same time and shoved Kise and Aomine together and said,  _ here; make out intensely and fall in love as acknowledgement that you’re the only two people in the world who could ever understand each other, and deal with the insane codependence that will most likely stem from that.  _ They dated, they moved in together, they had an intensely dramatic break-up process that spanned the entirety of Tokyo and reached all the way to international waters (because at some point Momoi had to call Akashi in a hysterical frenzy and Akashi had been attending a meeting in a million-dollar yacht in the middle of the Pacific or something of the like. He descended upon all of them with the fury of god and satan afterward. You don’t just interrupt someone like Akashi Seijūrō in the middle of a speech about stock market and psychological warfare). 

Now, it trailed all the way through this corner-street bar at 10pm, and Kise’s hair is falling on his forehead and Aomine wants to push it back behind his ear like he used to do when they woke up together. 

“Do you remember what Kuroko liked to drink?” Kise inquires. 

Aomine realizes he doesn’t. 

_ I might just get Kise to come over after this _ , he thinks.  _ I wonder if I changed the sheets.  _


End file.
